CAPTAIN AMERICA Will Be American. Joe Johnston Talks Costume, USO. Red Skull As The Villain

Movie blogs Collider, Hero Complex, AICN, and Shocktilyoudrop all have some updates from director Joe Johnston himself regarding the upcoming live action THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA. So without further ado, let’s tackle this, shall we…

* They will cast an American to play Captain America.. so you can pretty much cross out any British or Aussie potentials from your list.

“Well, we’re testing five or six guys,”
“The youngest is 23, the oldest is 32. Most of the guys in the war are just kids, 18 or 19, but we want to go a little bit older. We have to have somebody locked in before I leave March 1 for London.”

* If you’d recall, Johnston wants Steve Rogers to start out as a 98 lbs weakling, so that’s where the challenge lies, but he said that’s where the VFX will come into play.

“I think it’s probably possible that it was an influence,” he said. “I think they were looking for somebody that could handle the visual effects. I think that was a big part of it. And with visual effects, all you really need to know is what is possible. And these days, actually, that’s almost anything. Not everything is affordable, but almost everything is approachable.”

* Since it’s WWII era setting, filming will take place mostly in Europe

* Here’s their take on how Rogers got his costume/outfit..

“The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it.”
“It was never in the comics,”
“because they didn’t really need it. In comics, he puts on the costume and the reader just justifies because of the nature of the medium.”

By the way, USO stands for United Services Organizations, “which famously brought Bob Hope and other entertainers to morale-boosting events for troops overseas”

“So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight. When he does go AWOL, he covers up the suit but then, after a few things happen, he realizes that this uniform allows him to lead. By then, he’s become a star in the public mind and a symbol. The guys get behind him because he embodies something special.”

In the first USO sequences, the frustrated patriot will be wearing a version that is closer to the classic Jack Kirby-designed costume, but then later as the super-soldier hits the war zone he will be wearing a sturdier, more muted version that he makes himself that is more like battle togs. The stripes across his mid-section, for instance, will be straps, not colored fabric.
The government essentially puts him up there as a living comic-book character and he rips it off and then reclaims some of its imagery after he recognizes the value of it. We think it’s the best way to keep the costume and explain it at the same time.”

* Last but not least, Red Skull will be Captain America’s first nemesis in the movie..

Just heard on Geek Time on Sirius Howard 101 that RED SKULL is confirmed to be the villain in the Captain America Movie.

According to Wiki, The Red Skull a.k.a Johann Schmidt was a “former Nazi general officer and confidant of Adolf Hitler, he has been closely affiliated with HYDRA and is an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Avengers, and the interests of the United States and the free world in general. He was physically augmented by having his mind placed into the body of a clone of Captain America, the pinnacle of human perfection. He has been seemingly killed in the past, only to return time and time again to plague the world with schemes of world domination and genocide.”

Here’s an old clip of actor Scott Paulin playing Red Skull in a 1990 low budget Captain America movie.

* They’ll be shooting THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA in HD. Johnston is open to the possibility of 3D. And the reason why the want that WWII era now in this movie…

“Virtually the entire story except the bookends are in World War II because we all recognize we have one chance to tell the origin story of how he became Captain America, you can’t tell a modern story and then go back and tell the origin story. If you’re going to do it, let’s do it. Let’s do it first. Everyone wanted to tell an origin story. There was a version where it was a modern story and it didn’t work.”

THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA opens July 22nd, 2011